According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2019, 651,505 children were victims of abuse or neglect (a decrease of 21,643 compared to the previous year). Those figures mean that a child within the foster care system is either abused or neglected approximately every 48 seconds in America (1,785 times per day). That’s a truly alarming statistic, but as data provided by the Children’s Defense Fund indicates, foster care abuse and neglect is not only prevalent but systemic:

• More than half of all child maltreatment cases in 2019 involved children who were six years old or younger.
• 14.9% of those cases involved infants under 1-year-old.
• Neglect, often a proxy for the consequences of poverty, was the most common reason for children entering the child welfare system.
• Neglect was associated with a child’s removal in 63% of cases.
• Issues related to unsafe or substandard housing were associated with 10% of child removals.
• After steadily rising every year since 2008, the proportion of child removals in which parental drug abuse played a role declined in 2019.
• Parental drug abuse is partly responsible for 34% of child removals, while alcohol abuse played a role in 5% of child removals.
• A common misconception is that physical and sexual abuse are the primary drivers of child welfare involvement, though these serious forms of abuse factor into a smaller portion of cases.
• Physical abuse was associated with 13% of removals, while sexual abuse was associated with 4% of children being removed from the foster care system.
• Children spend an average of 19.6 months in foster care, with 14% spending more than three years in the system.
• Children of color, particularly Black and American Indian/Alaska Native children, are dramatically overrepresented in the child welfare system.
• Of every 1,000 white children in the United States, 5.2 are in foster care, compared with 9.9 of every 1,000 Black children and 16.9 of every 1,000 American Indian/Alaska Native children.
• Nationally, Black children are represented in foster care at a rate that is 1.66 times their portion of the overall population, and in 18 states at a rate that is more than double.
• American Indian/Alaska Native children are represented in foster care at a rate that is 2.84 times their portion of the population nationally. This disproportionality varies by state, however, with 11 states where the percent of the foster care population that is American Indian/Alaska Native is more than double the percent of the overall child population that is American Indian/Alaska Native, including one state where it is more than 15 times as high.